Good morning.

Memorial Day in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of ninety-four.  Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:23 PM, for 15h 03m 15s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

As is traditional, Whitewater’s Memorial Day parade will begin at 10:30 AM in the center of town, near Fremont & Main Streets, with a route leading to the local posts for the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion at 292 S. Wisconsin Avenue.  Memorial Day ceremonies will begin at the thereafter at 11 AM.

On this day in 1837, the first steamer, the James Madison, visits Milwaukee.

Recommended for reading in full —

Robert J. Samuelson describes Getting schooled on trade:

President Trump’s education in global trade continues. Not long ago, he declared that trade wars “are good and easy to win.” He knows better now. The administration’s performance in its latest trade talks with China has been ineffectual, instructive and (yes) humiliating.

Let’s be clear. China is the one major country where an aggressive American trade policy is warranted — unlike Trump’s decisions to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). These were exercises in grandstanding, intended to impress his supporters.

In reality, these moves damaged American interests. They alienated our allies and trading partners, from Canada and Mexico (NAFTA) to Japan, Australia and Chile (TPP). Trump’s obsession with trade deficits further muddies the debate.

  Seung Min Kim writes Trump is blaming Democrats for separating migrant families at the border. Here’s why this isn’t a surprise:

In one of several misleading tweets during the holiday weekend, Trump pushed Democrats to change a “horrible law” that the president said mandated separating children from parents who enter the country illegally. But there is no law specifically requiring the government to take such action, and it’s also the policies of his own administration that have caused the family separation that advocacy groups and Democrats say is a crisis.

In April, more than 50,000 migrants were apprehended or otherwise deemed “inadmissible,” and administration officials have made clear that children will be separated from parents who enter the country illegally and are detained. The surge in illegal border crossings is expected to continue as the economy improves and warmer weather arrives.

(Trump blames others, habitually, for his own reprehensible acts.  He is what he accuses others of being.)

 Natasha Bertrand writes A Timeline of Trump Associates Asking for Dirt on Clinton (“A new report that Roger Stone sought damaging information on Clinton from Julian Assange is the latest in an increasingly complicated chronology”):

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone tried to solicit information about Hillary Clinton from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in September 2016. At the time, the Journalreported, Stone wrote to Randy Credico, a New York radio host who had interviewed Assange, and asked Credico to ask Assange for “any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30, 2011.”

Like Stone, Trump seemed to believe that damaging information about Clinton could be found in the emails that she sent using her private email server, and later deleted. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a press conference in July 2016.

Stone and Trump were not alone in seeking help from WikiLeaks and Russia during the election. One of Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr., asked WikiLeaks via a private Twitter message in October whether a “leak” was coming and what it was about. Trump Jr. also attended a meeting at Trump Tower, along with Trump’s campaign chairman and son-in-law, after a suggestion that he’d be able to see incriminating information on Clinton from Russia’s “crown prosecutor.” [Detailed timeline follows in full article.]

  Joan Biskupic describes Trump’s sustained attacks on American rights:

Over the past 24 months, Trump has scorned judges, derided the American court system, and trampled on all manner of constitutional principles. Trump has especially ridiculed due process of law, the bedrock against government’s arbitrary denial of a person’s life, liberty or property.

Critics warn that denunciations that once seemed so aberrational may be seeping into the American psyche and influencing how government operates.

This week, Trump suggested immigrants at the border could be summarily deported without any hearing to determine if they deserved asylum or were US citizens wrongly apprehended. In a Fox News interview that aired on Thursday, Trump flatly deemed the system of immigration judges “corrupt” and said, “Whoever heard of a system where you put people through trials? Where do these judges come from?”

The administrative system, in fact, is part of Trump’s executive branch, run by the Justice Department; the attorney general appoints immigration judges.

In the same interview, Trump responded to the NFL policy prohibiting kneeling during the “Star-Spangled Banner,” with a message for players who refuse to stand for the anthem: “Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.”

Such an attitude inflames controversy over league rules for players protesting racial injustice to intimations of government rejection of its citizens – for speaking out.

Due Process. Citizenship. Racial Equality. Trump’s targets seem to merit none of these. It is not lost on Trump’s detractors that he routinely takes aim at immigrants and racial minorities.

At the same time, the President expresses outrage over what happens to the men of his world.

You’ve Been Pouring Guinness All Wrong?:

(The science is interesting, but I’ll stick with the tulip glass, thanks very much.)

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of ninety-four.  Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:22 PM, for 15h 01m 47s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1933, producer Walt Disney and director Burt Gillett release Three Little Pigs.  The animated short, part of the Silly Symphony series, won the 1934 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

Recommended for reading in full —

Josh Dawsey and Nick Miroff report The hostile border between Trump and the head of DHS:

Nielsen brings a lawyerly, technocratic approach to an issue that animates the president like no other, with a passion dyed into the blood-red MAGA caps of his supporters.

The night before Trump delivered his first speech to Congress in February 2017, he huddled with senior adviser Jared Kushner and Miller in the Oval Office to talk immigration. The president reluctantly agreed with suggestions that he strike a gentler tone on immigration in the speech.

Trump reminded them the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he were at a rally, he recited a few made-up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, such as rape or murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country — as they did when he highlighted crimes by illegal immigrants at his rallies, according to a person present for the exchange and another briefed on it later. Miller and Kushner laughed.

(Nielsen wasn’t drafted; she accepted this role.  She’s culpable for membership in this administration, one where Trump spews bigotry while others laugh.)

  Michael Isikoff reports ‘Trump’s son should be concerned’: FBI obtained wiretaps of Putin ally who met with Trump Jr.:

The FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with U.S. lawmakers and the National Rifle Association, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., in May 2016, a top Spanish prosecutor said Friday.

José Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime, said that bureau officials in recent months requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps, Romanov refers to Torshin as “El Padrino,” the godfather.

“Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” Grinda said in response to a question from Yahoo News during a talk he gave at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Asked if he was concerned about Torshin’s meetings with Donald Trump Jr. and other American political figures, Grinda replied: “Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.”

Jennifer Rubin observes #NeverTrumpers had Trump pegged all along:

President Trump’s apologists can’t say they weren’t warned. Virtually every character flaw and policy debacle was in plain view during the campaign. Republicans then, as Republicans do now, convinced themselves and their fellow Americans that Trump was a business genius (in fact he serially failed and hid his finances to prevent any objective assessment of his success). These Republicans told us he’d find and use top-notch experts (not!), had great negotiating skills (aside from bluff and bluster, he has no finesse in presidential-level consensus-building on either the domestic or foreign policy side).

Trump really did mean all the horrible things he said about immigrants and really does not have a clue how international trade works. His self-absorption and insecurity do pose a danger to the United States when he engages with foreign leaders who know they can play him through flattery.

Yes he does have a problem with women — a dozen or more claimed improper sexual conduct and one consensual sexual partner was hushed up with a $130,000 payment. His denials about having nothing to do with Russia have proven misleading at best, if not outright false. (CNBC has compiled a helpful video examining Trump’s web of Russia connections.)

  Here’s that CNBC compilation of The Trump-Russia ties hiding in plain sight:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of ninety.  Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:22 PM, for 15h 00m 17s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1805, French dictator Napoleon declares himself ruler of the Kingdom of Italy (Emperor of the French and King of Italy).

Recommended for reading in full —

  Melena Ryzik reports Weinstein in Handcuffs Is a ‘Start to Justice’ for His Accusers:

It was, the women said, a foreign feeling, a twinned sense of disbelief and hope. Often, it spilled out physically, in shaking and tears: Hope d’Amore suddenly started sobbing in the middle of a Neiman Marcus in Texas; Dawn Dunning at her kitchen table in Los Angeles. On Friday, the news of Harvey Weinstein’s arrest wound its way through the lives of the many women who stepped forward to accuse him, over and over, of harassment, assault and abuse.

Most did not believe the day would ever come when they would see him marched into a courthouse, where he was charged with two counts of rape and a criminal sex act.

It was a stark — and to some, a long-delayed — reversal of fortune for Mr. Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul whose downfall helped usher in the global #MeToo movement.

(If, at last, some measure of justice reaches even a man so powerful as Weinstein, what dark hope do institutional offenders and their apologists have within the nine square miles of this small city?)

Damian Paletta reports Trump says he’ll spare Chinese telecom firm ZTE from collapse, defying lawmakers:

President Trump said late Friday he had allowed embattled Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE Corp. to remain open despite fierce bipartisan opposition on Capitol Hill, defying lawmakers who have warned that the huge technology company should be severely punished for breaking U.S. law.

Trump said on Twitter he was allowing it to “reopen with high level security guarantees, change of management and board,” a requirement that it must purchase U.S. parts, and a $1.3 billion fine.

Sensing such a move, top Democrats and at least one Republican on Friday said the White House’s decision was tantamount to a bailout of a large Chinese company with little benefit for the United States.

The requirement that ZTE purchase U.S. parts could draw criticism on Capitol Hill, as the company relies on U.S. parts to make its products. In fact, it was the Commerce Department’s April penalty that banned ZTE from buying U.S. parts that effectively put it on the brink of closure.

The Obama administration and Trump administration have repeatedly punished ZTE for violating sanctions laws by selling products to Iran and North Korea and then lying to federal investigators.

(Trump: Make China Great Again.)

 Marwa Eltagouri reports Publix halts donations to self-described ‘NRA sellout’ amid boycott, ‘die-in’ protests by David Hogg:

The supermarket chain Publix on Friday announced that it would suspend its political contributions to Adam Putnam, a Republican candidate for Florida governor, after being faced with overwhelming pressure to cut ties with him because of his fierce support for the National Rifle Association.

“We would never knowingly disappoint our customers or the communities we serve,’’ Publix said in a statement Friday. “As a result, we decided earlier this week to suspend corporate-funded political contributions as we reevaluate our giving processes.’’

The announcement came moments before “die-in” protests organized by 18-year-old gun-control activist David Hogg began at several Publix supermarkets, forcing store managers to reroute shoppers around the protesters, who lay on the floors of the aisles. At an Orlando supermarket, store managers fetched grocery items for customers who stood to watch but mostly went on shopping, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

At two Publix supermarkets in Parkland, survivors of the February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shouted “USA, not NRA!” as customers navigated their shopping carts around them on the floor, according to the Associated Press. Counterprotesters supporting the NRA turned up at one of the stores, where a near-confrontation almost occurred between two men before police intervened.

(See also  The Pentagon Considers This Russian Sniper Rifle a Big Threat to US Soldiers. The NRA Helped Promote It. One can support responsible gun ownership without supporting the NRA – indeed, it’s not possible, reasonably, to support both.)

William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Mike McIntire report At Trump Tower, Michael Cohen and Oligarch Discussed Russian Relations:

Eleven days before the presidential inauguration last year, a billionaire Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin visited Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet with Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, according to video footage and another person who attended the meeting.

In Mr. Cohen’s office on the 26th floor, he and the oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, discussed a mutual desire to strengthen Russia’s relations with the United States under President Trump, according to Andrew Intrater, an American businessman who attended the meeting and invests money for Mr. Vekselberg. The men also arranged to see one another during the inauguration festivities, the second of their three meetings, Mr. Intrater said.

Days after the inauguration, Mr. Intrater’s private equity firm, Columbus Nova, awarded Mr. Cohen a $1 million consulting contract, a deal that has drawn the attention of federal authorities investigating Mr. Cohen, according to people briefed on the inquiry.

Darryl Fears reports Here’s why there are so many coyotes and why they are spreading so fast:

For eons, coyotes roamed what is now the western United States, with its wide-open plains. Then came European settlers, who cut down forests for farms and ranches in a steady east-west march. Along the way, they killed large predators such as pumas and wolves to protect livestock and for their own safety.

The predators they obliterated were mortal enemies of the coyote, holding them in check, a new study in the journal ZooKeys says. As mountain lions and wolf packs disappeared from the landscape, coyotes took advantage, starting a wide expansion eastward at the turn of the last century into deforested land that continues today.

Coyotes are newly established in every state and several Canadian provinces and are rapidly moving south of Mexico into Central America, the study released Tuesday says. They have even been spotted by camera traps in Panama. They are in the District’s Rock Creek Park and New York’s Central Park, and they have been known to attack household pets and, on very rare occasions, people. Their rapid expansion into North Carolina in the past decade is a major reason a program to rehabilitate critically endangered red wolves there is on the brink of failure.

(At least readers of this publication were warned.)

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a late afternoon thunderstorm, and a high of eighty-six.  Sunrise is 5:22 AM and sunset 8:21 PM, for 14h 58m 42s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 83.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1787, the Constitutional Convention begins in Philadelphia.

Recommended for reading in full —

Eric Gay reports on an ACLU Report: Detained Immigrant Children Subjected To Widespread Abuse By Officials:

Immigrant children in the custody of U.S. border authorities allegedly suffered pervasive abuse ranging from insults and threats to physical assaults, according to documents reviewed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

A report released this week by the ACLU is based on more than 30,000 pages of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, it says, “expose of culture of impunity” within U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security.

In response, Customs and Border Protection issued a strongly worded statement in which it called the ACLU report “unfounded and baseless.”

The documents describe hundreds of cases of alleged abuse said to have occurred between 2009 and 2014, according to Mitra Ebadolahi, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Border Litigation Project.

“These documents provide a glimpse into a federal immigration enforcement system marked by brutality and lawlessness,” Ebadolahi said in a statement.

…

Among the allegations, U.S. officials are said to have:

• Denied a pregnant minor medical attention when she reported pain, which preceded a stillbirth.
• Subjected a 16-year-old girl to a search in which they “forcefully spread her legs and touched her private parts so hard that she screamed.”
• Left a 4-lb. premature baby and her minor mother in an overcrowded and dirty cell filled with sick people, against medical advice.
• Threw out a child’s birth certificate and threatened him with sexual abuse by an adult male detainee.
• Ran over a 17-year-old with a patrol vehicle and then punched him repeatedly.

  Martin Cizmar writes Reporter perfectly explains Roger Stone’s weird dealings with Julian Assange and a radio DJ:

Roger’s Stone’s dealings with Julian Assange and a failed stand-up comedian who interviewed the Wikileaks founder is a lot to process.

The notoriously shady Stone pretty much lies about everything, which makes untangling his dealings a mess.

But the Wall Street Journal‘s Shelby Holliday has spent some time looking into Stone and Randy Credico, the DJ for WBAI, and laid out their ties to Assange in a brilliant MSNBC segment that pretty much explains the whole thing.

“There are a lot of layers here,” she says, before getting into the complex dealings.

David Frum lists Fifteen Unanswered Criminal-Law Questions About Trump:

• Trump campaign aides and associates met with Russian agents in advance of the Russian hacks and releases of Democratic internal communications. Did these meetings lead to any form of coordination between the Trump campaign, the Trump family, or Trump supporters on the one hand and Russian intelligence and its proxy, WikiLeaks, on the other?
• Russia engaged in large-scale and illegal expenditures on social media to help elect Trump. Did the Trump campaign, the Trump family, or Trump supporters coordinate or assist in any way with these violations of U.S. law?
• Trump campaign aides reportedly met with representatives of Persian Gulf governments who offered to violate U.S. law to help elect Trump. What came of those meetings? [Remaining key 12 questions listed in full article.]

 Michael Gerson asks Are Republicans abetting a demagogue — or something worse?:

Much about the future of American politics — and the historical judgment that will be visited on those associated with it — depends on the answer to one question: Is President Trump an instinctual demagogue or an instinctual authoritarian?

On most days, the evidence favors the former interpretation. Trump often acts like a desperate, self-interested politician, convinced that his enemies fight dirty and determined to out-slime them. So he pursues a strategy of character assassination against the special counsel on the model of President Bill Clinton discrediting Ken Starr. This is squalid and damaging, but at least familiar.

Then there are other days — and more and more of them — that justify the latter interpretation. Rather than a politician trying to muddy the waters, Trump seems more like a strongman probing the limits of democracy. He seems less like Clinton and more like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, seeking to dismantle institutional checks on his authority. “This is what it looks like,” Sen. Jeff Flake(R-Ariz.) said, “when you stress-test all of the institutions that undergird our constitutional democracy at the same time.”

 The US Geological Survey is recording Kilauea’s volcanic activity:

At Kilauea Volcano’s summit, a nearly continuous plume of gas and steam billows out of the Overlook vent and drifts with the wind. Overflights collect visual information to quantify change and inform our assessment of hazards. https://t.co/oOL3HwFcrh pic.twitter.com/2rM4WfdKqd

— USGS Volcanoes? (@USGSVolcanoes) May 24, 2018

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-five.  Sunrise is 5:23 AM and sunset 8:20 PM, for 14h 57m 05s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1775, John Hancock is unanimously elected President of the Continental Congress.

Recommended for reading in full —

  Denise Clifton contends Russia’s Campaign to Help Trump Win Was Just the Start (“And the next attack on US elections, warns former FBI agent Clint Watts, could come from within”):

Former FBI special agent Clint Watts was tracking ISIS terrorists and their propaganda on Twitter in 2014 when he first encountered a different kind of troll. These accounts weren’t trying to recruit fighters for jihad. They were promoting an “Alaska Back to Russia” petition on WhiteHouse.gov, pushing pro-Kremlin foreign policy views, and drumming up support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Watching this troll army inundate social media into 2015 and 2016—including rising attacks on Hillary Clinton and promotion of Donald Trump for president—Watts realized a new information war was underway. As he tracked false news stories from Russian state media that were repeated by the Trump campaign, he was surprised to see that Kremlin-linked disinformation was sometimes even driving the campaign’s own narrative. Two days before Election Day, Watts and his fellow cybersecurity analysts JM Berger and Andrew Weisburd warned that the Kremlin wasn’t just backing Trump but was seeking “to produce a divided electorate and a president with no clear mandate to govern. The ultimate objective is to diminish and tarnish American democracy.”

In the aftermath, as lawmakers struggled to contend with Russia’s role, the Senate Intelligence Committee relied on Watts’ expertise to help it understand the attack across social media networks. In his new book, Messing With the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News, Watts details how Americans found themselves in a presidential election that was swirling with fake accounts and Kremlin propaganda. His work with Berger and Weisburd has also aided the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s Hamilton 68 Dashboard, which tracks a network of hundreds of Twitter accounts pushing Kremlin propaganda to this day. Watts spoke to Mother Jones recently about Putin’s backing of Trump in 2016, Twitter’s bot problems, and other US tech giants’ role in the morass. And he offered a roadmap for navigating the even more sophisticated influence campaigns that may be looming for future elections—and that could originate within the US political system itself [see full article for interview with Watts].

Andrew Desiderio and Kevin Poulsen report Exclusive: U.S. Government Can’t Get Controversial Kaspersky Lab Software Off Its Networks (“The law says American agencies must eliminate the use of Kaspersky Lab software by October. U.S. officials say that’s impossible—it’s embedded too deep in our infrastructure”):

Federal agencies are so far unable to comply with a law banning Kaspersky Lab software from U.S. government networks by October, The Daily Beast has learned. Multiple divisions of the U.S. government are confronting the reality that code written by the Moscow-based security company is embedded deep within American infrastructure, in routers, firewalls, and other hardware—and nobody is certain how to get rid of it.

“It’s messy, and it’s going to take way longer than a year,” said one U.S. official. “Congress didn’t give anyone money to replace these devices, and the budget had no wiggle-room to begin with.”

…

“On May 8, DHS chief Kirstjen Nielsen promised to provide senators with data on the Kaspersky purge ‘later today.’ Two weeks later: nothing.”

Peter Baker reports Trump Team’s Mueller Strategy: Limit the Investigation and Attack the Investigators:

“This is an effort by the president to distract from his legal troubles and throw as much mud into the air as he can,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “But it’s doing enormous damage to the Justice Department. If they think they can placate him, they’ll probably find that doesn’t work. That doesn’t placate a bully.”

James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence under President Barack Obama, said that Mr. Trump is trying to distort standard investigatory practices to insinuate wrongdoing.

“I didn’t know about this informant,” said Mr. Clapper, whose memoir, “Facts and Fears: Hard Truths From a Life in Intelligence,” will be published Tuesday. “No one in the White House knew. Certainly the president didn’t know. This is a routine thing that goes on all the time. We’re making a huge mountain out of a molehill. The purpose was to understand what the Russians were doing.”

Paul Wood reports Trump lawyer ‘paid by Ukraine’ to arrange White House talks:

Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, received a secret payment of at least $400,000 (£300,000) to fix talks between the Ukrainian president and President Trump, according to sources in Kiev close to those involved.

The payment was arranged by intermediaries acting for Ukraine’s leader, Petro Poroshenko, the sources said, though Mr Cohen was not registered as a representative of Ukraine as required by US law.

Mr Cohen denies the allegation.

The meeting at the White House was last June. Shortly after the Ukrainian president returned home, his country’s anti-corruption agency stopped its investigation into Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

A high-ranking Ukrainian intelligence officer in Mr Poroshenko’s administration described what happened before the visit to the White House.

  Here’s The Most Decorated Dog of WWI:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty.  Sunrise is 5:23 AM and sunset 8:19 PM, for 14h 55m 25s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 65.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1854, the first railroad reaches Madison: “On this date the Milwaukee and Mississippi railroad reached Madison, connecting the city with Milwaukee. When the cars pulled into the depot, thousands of people gathered to witness the ceremonial arrival of the first train, and an enormous picnic was held on the Capitol grounds for all the passengers who’d made the seven-hour trip from Milwaukee to inaugurate the line.”

Recommended for reading in full —

  Mark Sommerhauser writes Report: Wisconsin local governments turn to wheel taxes as state road funding stagnates:

Local governments, including Dane County, increasingly resorted to imposing wheel taxes since 2011 to fund local roads, as the buying power of state funding declined, a new report found.

The report was released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum.

It found vehicle registration fees, also known as “wheel taxes,” were in place in 27 communities at the end of 2017 — compared to four in 2011. Wheel tax revenues in the same period nearly tripled from $7.1 million to $20.7 million.

Local governments rely on a mix of state and local revenues to fund the roads, bridges and transit for which they are responsible. State aid for local roads increased 15.5 percent from 2007 to 2017, the study found. But that failed to keep pace with the Consumer Price Index, which typically rises more slowly than road construction costs, according to the report.

Emily Stewart reports Harley-Davidson took its tax cut, closed a factory, and rewarded shareholders:

In September 2017, House Speaker Paul Ryan traveled to a Harley-Davidson plant in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, to tout the Republican tax bill, which President Trump would sign later that year. “Tax reform can put American manufacturers and American companies like Harley-Davidson on a much better footing to compete in the global economy and keep jobs here in America,” Ryan told workers and company leaders.

Four months later and 500 miles away in Kansas City, Missouri, 800 workers at a Harley-Davidson factory were told they would lose their jobs when the plant closed its doors and shifted operations to a facility in York, Pennsylvania — a net loss of 350 jobs. Workers and union representatives say they didn’t see it coming.

Just days later, the company announced a dividend increase and a stock buyback plan to repurchase 15 million of its shares, valued at about $696 million.

It’s a pattern that’s played out over and over since the tax cuts passed — companies profit, shareholders reap the benefits, and workers get left out. Corporate stock buybacks hit a record $178 billion in the first three months of 2018; average hourly earnings for American workers are up 67 cents over the past year. Harley-Davidson is an American symbol, and President Trump has trotted it out as an example of business success. But as it’s getting its tax cut, it’s outsourcing jobs and paying shareholders.

(When a corporation gets a tax cut, they’ve more than one option for using it.  Stock buy-backs are lawful, and I’d not contend otherwise.  It’s a confidence game, however, for Trump, Pence, and Ryan to dupe workers into thinking that particular jobs in particular locations might be preserved through the Trump tax legislation.  They’ve not been honest about the possibilities – and consequences – of their own legislation.)

Paul Kane observes Republicans wanted a weak speaker. They’ve succeeded, and then some:

House Republicans made a calculated decision eight years ago as they began their campaign for the majority: They wanted a weak speaker.

So their 2010 campaign-style document — “A Pledge to America,” crafted at the time by a backbench Republican, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — vowed to reform the process and empower rank-and-file lawmakers to take part in drafting policy. Leaders were forbidden from rushing bills to the House floor and forced to demonstrate the constitutional veracity of any bill introduced.

The “Pledge” did not cure the disease of legislative dysfunction. But Republicans sure have succeeded in weakening the House speaker in terms of dictating the outcome of legislative battles and in exposing the current occupant to periodic eviction threats.

Now, eight years later, as McCarthy’s allies rally support for his own bid for speaker, one thing is all but certain: If McCarthy, currently the No. 2 GOP leader, ever does claim the gavel, he will almost certainly be a weak speaker worried about ideological threats within the House Republican Conference.

Laurie Goodstein writes ‘This Is Not of God’: When Anti-Trump Evangelicals Confront Their Brethren:

LYNCHBURG, Va. — The night before Shane Claiborne came to town to preach at a Christian revival, he received a letter from the chief of police at Liberty University warning that if he set foot on the property, he would be arrested for trespassing and face up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

At first glance, Mr. Claiborne hardly appeared a threat to Liberty University, a dominant force in Lynchburg, Va., and a powerful engine in evangelical Christianity. Wearing baggy clothes that he sews himself, Mr. Claiborne preaches the gospel, lives among the poor and befriends prisoners on death row, modeling his ministry on the life of Jesus.

But to the leaders of Liberty, he was a menace to their campus. He and his national network of liberal evangelicals, called the Red Letter Christians, were holding a revival meeting to protest in Liberty’s backyard. Their target: Jerry Falwell Jr., Liberty’s president and a man who has played a pivotal role in forging the alliance between white evangelicals and Donald J. Trump, who won 81 percent of their vote.

Mr. Claiborne and his group are the other evangelicals. The Red Letter Christians, a reference to the words of Jesus printed in some Bibles in red type, are not the evangelicals invited for interviews on Fox News or MSNBC. They don’t align neatly with either political party. But they have fierce moral and theological objections to those evangelicals who have latched onto Mr. Trump and the Republican Party.

See also  Michael Gerson, The Last Temptation (“How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory”).

  Consider the Science Of Why People Hate The Word ‘Moist’:

(The word’s never been irritating to me, but I’ve met people who find it truly unsettling.)

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of sixty-nine.  Sunrise is 5:24 AM and sunset 8:18 PM, for 14h 53m 42s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 54.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1968, the Milwaukee Bucks get their name: ” ‘Milwaukee Bucks’ was selected as the franchise name after 14,000 fans participated in a team-naming contest. 45 people suggested the name, one of whom, R.D. Trebilcox, won a car for his efforts.”

Recommended for reading in full —

  Thomas Franck reports Goldman Sachs: The fiscal outlook for the US ‘is not good’:
Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, sees the deficit ballooning to $2.05 trillion (7 percent of GDP) by 2028.”

Lawmakers might hesitate to approve fiscal stimulus in the next downturn in light of the already substantial budget deficit,” the economist said.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that debt could equal GDP within a decade, a level not seen since World War II.

(Trump ran his businesses into the ground; unchecked, he’ll do the same to America’s economy.)

Adam Serwer contends There Is Only One Trump Scandal (“The myriad Trump scandals can obscure the fact that they’re all elements of one massive tale of corruption”):

There’s the ongoing special-counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign aided a Russian campaign to aid Trump’s candidacy and defeat his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton; there’s the associated inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey, whom he had asked not to investigate his former national-security adviser; there are the president’s hush-money payments to women with whom he allegedly had extramarital affairs, made through his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, and facilitated by corporate cash paid to influence the White House; there is his ongoing effort to interfere with the Russia inquiry and politicize federal law enforcement; there are the foreign governments that seem to be utilizing the president’s properties as vehicles for influencing administration policy; there’s the emerging evidence that Trump campaign officials sought aid not only from Russia, but from other foreign countries, which may have affected Trump’s foreign policy; there are the ongoing revelations of the president’s Cabinet officials’ misusing taxpayer funds; there is the accumulating evidence that administration decisions are made at the behest of private industry, in particular those in which Republican donors have significant interests.

The preceding wall of text may appear to some as an abridged list of the Trump administration’s scandals, but this is an illusion created by the perception that these are all separate affairs. Viewed as such, the various Trump scandals can seem multifarious and overpowering, and difficult to fathom.

There are not many Trump scandals. There is one Trump scandal. Singular: the corruption of the American government by the president and his associates, who are using their official power for personal and financial gain rather than for the welfare of the American people, and their attempts to shield that corruption from political consequences, public scrutiny, or legal accountability.

Desmond Butler and Tom LoBianco write of The princes, the president and the fortune seekers:

“I think my friend not very wise for you to be seeing (sic) at this event,” Nader wrote to Broidy. “Many journalists and people from Russia and other countries will be around.”

Broidy met Trump once again on Dec. 2. He reported back to Nader that he’d told Trump the crown princes were “most favorably impressed by his leadership.” He offered the crown princes’ help in the Middle East peace plan being developed by Jared Kushner. He did not tell Trump that his partner had complete contempt for the plan — and for the president’s son-in-law.

“You have to hear in private my Brother what Principals think of ‘Clown prince’s’ efforts and his plan!” Nader wrote. “Nobody would even waste cup of coffee on him if it wasn’t for who he is married to.”

Days after Broidy’s meeting with Trump, the UAE awarded Broidy the intelligence contract the partners had been seeking for up to $600 million over 5 years, according to a leaked email.

Eric Bader reports Ariane chief seems frustrated with SpaceX for driving down launch costs:

When pressed on the price pressure that SpaceX has introduced into the launch market, Charmeau’s central argument is that this has only been possible because, “SpaceX is charging the US government 100 million dollar per launch, but launches for European customers are much cheaper.” Essentially, he says, launches for the US military and NASA are subsidizing SpaceX’s commercial launch business.

However, the pay-for-service prices that SpaceX offers to the US Department of Defense for spy satellites and cargo and crew launches for NASA are below those of what other launch companies charge. And while $100 million or more for a military launch is significantly higher than a $62 million commercial launch, government contracts come with extra restrictions, reviews, and requirements that drive up this price.

Even as Charmeau decries what he calls subsidies for SpaceX from the US government, he admits that Ariane cannot exist without guaranteed contracts purchased by European governments. To make the Ariane 6 vehicle viable, Charmeau said Ariane needs five launches in total for 2021 and eight guaranteed launches for 2022.

Chuck Quirmbach reports UW-Madison Study Explores Bats As Skeeter-Eaters:

A University of Wisconsin-Madison study recently published in the Journal of Mammalogy shows details of how much two species of bats love to eat mosquitos.

Scientists have long known bats consume mosquitoes. But UW-Madison researchers wanted to learn more about the flying mammals versus the buzzing bugs.

Study author Amy Wray, a UW-Madison Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology PhD student, led a team that analyzed fecal material of two common bats, the little brown bat and big brown bat, collected by citizen scientists at 22 Wisconsin sites in the summer of 2014.

Wray said the results show bats seem to do a lot of mosquito eating in spring.